Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

I also should note I have the 2h staff from 10m icc Saur. I would effectively lose around 100sp and 2.5% crit, but gain just over 4% haste. Would it be more beneficial for me to swap to that wep until I can get my haste to a higher lvl through gear?

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Play around with it and see how it feels. That's a large trade of SP to Haste. The crit is inconsequential, you have quite a bit more than you need, but the SP will be a big trade. Might work for you, might not.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

1. Why Body and Soul is a vital talent.
- This has been the case since ToC and is even more helpful in ICC. This has nothing to do with only being useful if you play poorly and has a good use on every single boss in ICC which do not relate in any way to having poor reaction time.

But it's not a vital talent since ToC? I'll explain ToC.
- Icehowl
He charges, you already get given a speed buff, everyone gets scattered so chances you're near that person are pretty slim anyway. If you do manage to get hit by Icehowl's charge you're quite bad.

-Valkyr color switching
You should be stood next to a portal, or close.

- Anub underground
You have a stupidly long amount of time to get to some frost on the floor

Like I said, you aren't providing examples, so your points are obsolete. From the ToC bosses I've listed, Body and Soul would prove to make these boss fights ever so slightly easier. It's not a 'needed' talent, and the points can go elsewhere.
Body and Soul also gets in the way of Disc priests. All good raids carry a Disc Priest with them

2. Why Flash Heal should not be cast specifically to stack Serendipity.
- Been talked about in several hundred posts by now. Using Flash Heal specifically to stack Serendipity slows down your healing, rather than speeding it up. The cast time reduction does not offset the minimum GCD requirement to stack it. This is complicated further by precasting.

You're casting Flash Heal all the time regardless. It doesn't have to be to stack Serendipity. In fact I don't recall ever saying cast it just for less PoH time.
Let's say the raid is taking heavy damage over 10 seconds. The obvious thing to do is PoM, followed by PoH&CoH, followed by an instant Flash Heal. This should take you less than 5 seconds. Then from that flash heal you go straight into PoH again, flash heal, PoM, CoH, flash heal then finish with a final PoM.

In that 10 seconds, you were using SoL a few times to get Serendipity, but all wasn't for serendipity, most was to use a no mana costing flash heal to top some low person in your raid, then followed by some AoE heals which are then off cooldown, alot of it requires good timing.

3. Holy rolling Renew does not make Holy any more, or less viable.
- Been talked about all over. Priests in general have worse heals than the other healing classes. They spend more mana for less healing, but can typically react a hair faster. Doing something which another class can do better in every way does not make up for any shortcomings.

So I hear HoT's stack guys.
You should be renewing all the tanks, at all times, and putting renew on players who have debuffs/losing health etc.

4. 2/2 SoL is bad.
- Been talked about so many times my brain is going numb. 1/2 SoL is superior to 2/2 SoL for Renew specs because the instant crit-free FH produced by SoL is highly situational and 1/2 SoL provides enough up-time to make use of it. 0/2 SoL, or 1/2 SoL is superior to 2/2 SoL for Flash Heal specs. The reason here is because SoL reduces throughput when spamming Flash Heal on a tank, or the raid.

"Q: 1 or 2 points in Surge of Light?
A: Nidaba can't justify a second point in a talent that gives a "free" Flash Heal that is incapable of proc'ing anything except Serendipity. 1 point is fine: if you cast PoH and *don't* crit at least once, something is seriously wrong; most PoH casts have at least 2 crits, sometimes more (in the case of pets in the party). Same goes for CoH. 1 point seems entirely sufficient. Some people swear by 2, but it is entirely up to you."

In my opinion, either is fine. I personally go for two, FH is a good spell which can save some lives if used quickly with instant, it also stacks serendipity when your other abilites are on CD.

5. Inner Focus is crappy.
- The argument that it's great with Hymn is silly. There is one fight in ICC where Hymn is used and it is not used for its own healing. Spending a talent point on something which will rarely be used is silly and the effect even when used together is minimal. Inner Focus was good in a specific strategy on a single fight in ToGC25 and good before that due to mana gains. Neither are important to ICC content.

Okay, I'm sorry to say this, but that is just extremely wrong. Hymn should always be used, it's one of our BEST abilities. Only using it on one fight in ICC is appauling, honestly. Inner focus and Hymn are an extremely good combo. Divine Hymn is a stupid amount of healing and should always be used, maybe not off CD, but when there's raid damage coming up it doesn't hurt to use it. It targets the lowest players and heals them, combined with Inner Focus and you've got yourself a free high mana costing ability with a much higher crit chance to top up the raid with. Not using it is stupidly silly.

Why should I 'debate' things which have been beaten to death? These are things people know and have known for a long time now. The fact that people do not know this, or can't be bothered to do the minimal amount of research needed to figure these things out is pathetic.

The fact is that they haven't been beaten to death, you just have no idea because you've probably read too many forums and you can't decide for yourself whether some abilites are good or not. Body and Soul is definitely not vital. It doesn't take an idiot to know that, so stop criticising as if you know, when you're not even backing up your points

Thanks for all the advice, keep it coming. Currently I'm attempting a spec Kelesti recommended. Which is the one my armory link probably currently shows. I wish I had a way to lock the spec I previously had so people could make suggestions based on that. Nonetheless I have had no attempt to really try this spec with the exception of uld 10 hm's we did today for rusted proto. 2 healing with a paladin and we did just fine, but again, not a real test yet.

To clarify one thing. With all the things that I've done that would reduce my overall mana pool or increase spell mana cost and even lower mana regen. I still have ZERO mana issues. Even our elite paladin is jealous of me. I don't mind standing and waiting for incoming damage, sometimes I'll even dps to be active, but I don't want that to be confused with my ability to madly spam spells at will throughout a chaotic encounter. I use the term madly in a loose sense, there is a method to the madness, but giving an example of the fact I can go all out for a 5 min fight and be at maybe 50% mana pool when done, my regen is insane to say the least. Hence why I no longer felt a 33k raid buffed mana pool was needed, and am even beginning to think that my low haste is keeping me from spamming as fast as I should be.

One more thing. I'm right around 4k sp raid buffed, with my current 35-38% crit raid buffed. Can anyone touch on the effectiveness of gemming straight sp at this point? I'd like to see some info that would make me understand the extra sp would go straight to overhealing.

Thanks again all.

harky is right, your haste is too low, in red/yellow sockets try gemming +10 sp +10 haste to get that up a bit.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

In regard to Body and Soul in ToC: I see where your oversight might be coming from. You've apparently never done ToGC. There is no haste buff on Icehowl. There are limited patches on Anub and kiting him for longer periods of time is key to minimizing the number of patches you use. Then again it might be a problem with reading comprehension as the point I was making was in regard to ICC, not ToC. Look through the sticky talent point discussion for a few comprehensive looks at ICC bosses and when to use B&S.

In regard to Serendipity: If you're casting Flash Heal at the time then you're using a FH build and there should be no dispute of how Serendipity is used. That does mean that you're using a build that is less suited to ICC, though. Renew specs do not cast Flash Heal that frequently and are also the premier builds for ICC. Shall we start another straw man argument and try to change the point? Seems silly to me. In your theoretical example it would depend on how damage is being done. No fight in ICC follows the model you're describing. If PoH will be needed multiple times then Serendipity should be ignored. If PoH is being used in reaction to a timed event then Serendipity should be ignored. In the first case it's faster to cast back to back Prayers between the CoH and PoM and not waste time with a weak, instant FH. CoH->PoM-PoH-PoH-CoH is superior.

In regards to Renew on tanks: The point was about three meters above your head. The point is not that you should not Renew tanks. The point was that using a HoT on a tank is not a strong point of Holy and if you try to claim it as such you will immediately be faced with the fact that if that Holy Priest was replaced with a Resto Druid the tanks would be in better shape. The point was not in how to use Renew, but in the relative strengths and weaknesses of the class.

In regards to Surge of Light: No. 2/2 Surge of Light is bad. For Flash Heal builds it reduces throughput. Recommended is 0/2 for Flash Heal builds because the trade-off of throughput to mana regen is very poor. 1/2 is recommended for Renew builds because there are times when you need to heal for ~4k extra instantly to make sure someone lives, but since you will not be casting Flash Heal at a high frequency 1 point will ensure high up-time of the SoL buff. Using old quotes with poor logic will not change that. You should be at 0, or 1, but never 2.

In regard to Inner Focus: It is not a case of only using Hymn on one fight. It is a case of only one fight relying on Hymn. Actually, in ICC, none do. There is no fight where you will ever say, "Can we hold this attempt for 2 minutes, Hymn is down." The big thing in ToGC is that there was Twins, where you would not want to have Hymn on cooldown for a real attempt. In ICC the only marginal use is on Dreamwalker to give her the healing buff temporarily in conjunction with high stack Paladins and Bloodlust. The throughput increase of IF on Hymn is very small and the mana returns are very small. It is a sub-par talent. No way around it.

Anyway, they have been beaten to death. Go read the stickies. Not only have they been beaten to death, they've been beaten some more afterward. You're trying to argue against some of the most over-discussed issues Priests have. Might as well bring up Lightwell, to be honest.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Originally Posted by Biohazard_4

That's one of the reasons I spec into it, just because I won't lose casting time if it's needed. Another example is Mimiron Phase 2, when the raid is taking damage, Healing Focus is, in my opinion, a wise choice.

mimiron p2 doesnt cause pushback any longer, it was hotfixed months and months and months ago

edit: that isnt to say it isnt a great talent, you should at LEAST have 1 pt in it and 2 if you dont have a constant conc aura

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

I really don't get all the fuss about Body and soul. I've never used it and i've never missed it... Maybe i'm one of those priest that doesent play the game correctly. :

Some people talk about Icehowl hardmode for example... well we killed it without body and soul, just run Forrest ! what i mean is that i've not yet seen an encounter that was worth the 2 talent points. I've only done 6 bosses in ICC so far, so maybe that will change.

Please don't think there is any "correct" way of playing a game... do feel free to give advice and i'm for one is always willing to learn, just do it in a civilised manner please.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

I think that Biohazard_4 (and all other people who don't acknowledge the usefulness of B&S) are simply in bad raids which are not able to raid hard modes. As said before, all that is discussed here has been discussed a couple hundred times. The information harky and Kelesti are providing is accurate. Everyone who says different is either a bad priest or doesn't care if he sucks.

But it's not a vital talent since ToC? I'll explain ToC.
- Icehowl
He charges, you already get given a speed buff, everyone gets scattered so chances you're near that person are pretty slim anyway. If you do manage to get hit by Icehowl's charge you're quite bad.

This made me laugh. Again, hard modes. Do you even know how to play heroic Icehowl? Nobody gets a speed buff.

Everyone who is reading this should listen to what harky and Kelesti have said and disregard everything else.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Originally Posted by Venara

I think that Biohazard_4 (and all other people who don't acknowledge the usefulness of B&S) are simply in bad raids which are not able to raid hard modes. As said before, all that is discussed here has been discussed a couple hundred times. The information harky and Kelesti are providing is accurate. Everyone who says different is either a bad priest or doesn't care if he sucks.

This made me laugh. Again, hard modes. Do you even know how to play heroic Icehowl? Nobody gets a speed buff.

Everyone who is reading this should listen to what harky and Kelesti have said and disregard everything else.

i could argue that you are in a bad raid that can't do Icehowl without B&S....

What's the point of arguing or trying to convince someone of your believes if you just tell people to ignore it anyway.

I say it's fine if you feel like you can't raid without B&S, but i just feel fine doing it without.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Originally Posted by harky

In regard to Body and Soul in ToC: I see where your oversight might be coming from. You've apparently never done ToGC. There is no haste buff on Icehowl. There are limited patches on Anub and kiting him for longer periods of time is key to minimizing the number of patches you use. Then again it might be a problem with reading comprehension as the point I was making was in regard to ICC, not ToC. Look through the sticky talent point discussion for a few comprehensive looks at ICC bosses and when to use B&S.

Body and Soul is excellent for this and it does help but it is not a neccessity. I agree after changing to a spec including B&S I have found many fights where popping it has helped immensely. That does not mean it's required. I struggle to find a more useful place to put my talent points though.

Originally Posted by harky

In regards to Surge of Light: No. 2/2 Surge of Light is bad. For Flash Heal builds it reduces throughput. Recommended is 0/2 for Flash Heal builds because the trade-off of throughput to mana regen is very poor. 1/2 is recommended for Renew builds because there are times when you need to heal for ~4k extra instantly to make sure someone lives, but since you will not be casting Flash Heal at a high frequency 1 point will ensure high up-time of the SoL buff. Using old quotes with poor logic will not change that. You should be at 0, or 1, but never 2.

I again agree with this. There is very little need for the extra point in surge.

Originally Posted by harky

In regard to Inner Focus: It is not a case of only using Hymn on one fight. It is a case of only one fight relying on Hymn. Actually, in ICC, none do. There is no fight where you will ever say, "Can we hold this attempt for 2 minutes, Hymn is down." The big thing in ToGC is that there was Twins, where you would not want to have Hymn on cooldown for a real attempt. In ICC the only marginal use is on Dreamwalker to give her the healing buff temporarily in conjunction with high stack Paladins and Bloodlust. The throughput increase of IF on Hymn is very small and the mana returns are very small. It is a sub-par talent. No way around it.

I was orginally a hardcore Inner Focus guy using it with Divine Hymn. Since switching it out in half decent gear I have not noticed at all that I am struggling with mana or anything and now I wonder why the hell I had it there in the first place. It is a point once again that can be spent better elsewhere.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Don't worry, you're just having a transition period from topping the meters in Ulduar to slowly get wtfowned by paladins and druids in ICC. That's the standard routine nowadays.

I said it on the other holy-priest-depression-topic, when paladins and druids have an output of 80 during the whole encounter, we have an output of 60 on normal damage, and an output of 100 on heavy damage. Considering the heavy damage time is always less than the normal damage time in an encounter, druids and paladins will always overheal you.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

I REALLY hope you're talking about the glyph there, because PoH is definitely a must in terms of raid healing,

i was ^^

now just to add to the B&S discussion,
if you are just a reactive healer and only stare at your raidframes, you probably wont get alot out of this talent.

i've been playing disc for 6 months or so, now playing holy sometimes, i'm used to pre-shielding, knowing when ppl are going to take dmg and knowing when they will have to move (and maybe fail).
it does require good situational awareness and knowing the encounters, but if you master it this talent is definatly worth it.

Originally Posted by Dreamless

Heh, ahh the internet. Where the 'glass is half full' and 'glass is half empty' people are both shouted down by the heaving masses of "WAAAAH! I WANT A FULL GLASS! WAAAAAAAH!'

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Splitting hairs over subtle gem choices/one talent point either way will have far less of an impact on performance than correcting bad habits in play style/awareness. Need to see your skill usage for further comment but generally, smarter usage of PoM/CoH/PoH will usually result in large gains.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Body and Soul is a fun talent, get it, dont get it. Like many things it won't make or break you as long as it fits your style of play and the role you have in your raid.

The truth is you really need to do the leg work and try stuff out. Alot of these posts have valid points, what you need to do is look at your own play style, how you heal, what heals you gravitate towards, what heals you use in your raids and pick up the talents that make them more powerful.

I know your original post started out with a plea for meter help, but there is seldom a point to topping meters. But if its your desire, just steal a move from the druid playbook and blanket your raid with renew, keep pom and coh on CD and throw out your free flash heals as they come along.

Personally I have Body and Soul and 2/2 SoL and for laughs Lightwell. It works for me, I am never oom, we kill stuff, if the damage exists I can kick out 7-8k hps needed to keep everyone alive, but at the same time there is seldom a need for that kind of healing so it often floats between 3-4k. If you are being pressured to heal more for a meter, go ahead and glyph poh and just spam it until oom point out how much healing you did and how pointless it all was.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Body and Soul is a fun talent, get it, dont get it. Like many things it won't make or break you as long as it fits your style of play and the role you have in your raid.

The truth is you really need to do the leg work and try stuff out. Alot of these posts have valid points, what you need to do is look at your own play style, how you heal, what heals you gravitate towards, what heals you use in your raids and pick up the talents that make them more powerful.

I know your original post started out with a plea for meter help, but there is seldom a point to topping meters. But if its your desire, just steal a move from the druid playbook and blanket your raid with renew, keep pom and coh on CD and throw out your free flash heals as they come along.

Personally I have Body and Soul and 2/2 SoL and for laughs Lightwell. It works for me, I am never oom, we kill stuff, if the damage exists I can kick out 7-8k hps needed to keep everyone alive, but at the same time there is seldom a need for that kind of healing so it often floats between 3-4k. If you are being pressured to heal more for a meter, go ahead and glyph poh and just spam it until oom point out how much healing you did and how pointless it all was.

I like you lol.

I'm going to be honest when I say I can't remember the last time I used prayer of healing. Holy priests, after much theorycrafting, benefit from haste more than any other stat in the game, and this kinda sucks because haste is the last thing you need for discipline.

I'm glyphed GS (saves so many wipes), Renew (which is optional depending on how much raid healing you have), and Circle of Healing. PoH is an option but quite honestly, your most effective healing spell as holy is Renew. Stack haste to lower your gcd, spam renew through groups, CoH and Mending on cooldown. It's incredibly effective, the empowered renew still procs your surge of light which in turns procs your 4 set t10 bonus which in turn throws more CoHs out.

Find an aura fight and your HPS can be that of a druids. And no, body and soul is not neccessary by any means, all it does is fuck up your disc priest who's currently trying to shield the raid. All raiders without a talented or spec'd movement speed buff should be using tuskars vitality or cat's swiftness on their boots anyway. Run out when you're supposed to do so and you wont need the benefit from body and soul. Let's be honest, when does a serious holy priest shield raid members anyways?

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Body and Soul is a fun talent, get it, dont get it. Like many things it won't make or break you as long as it fits your style of play and the role you have in your raid.

The truth is you really need to do the leg work and try stuff out. Alot of these posts have valid points, what you need to do is look at your own play style, how you heal, what heals you gravitate towards, what heals you use in your raids and pick up the talents that make them more powerful.

I know your original post started out with a plea for meter help, but there is seldom a point to topping meters. But if its your desire, just steal a move from the druid playbook and blanket your raid with renew, keep pom and coh on CD and throw out your free flash heals as they come along.

Personally I have Body and Soul and 2/2 SoL and for laughs Lightwell. It works for me, I am never oom, we kill stuff, if the damage exists I can kick out 7-8k hps needed to keep everyone alive, but at the same time there is seldom a need for that kind of healing so it often floats between 3-4k. If you are being pressured to heal more for a meter, go ahead and glyph poh and just spam it until oom point out how much healing you did and how pointless it all was.

I like this guy too lol. ;D

The truth of the matter is, is that Holy Priests have more than 1 style of healing due to the fact we have an arsenal of heals bigger than most (insert high dps class/spec here)'s ego, and what one person says is a good way to heal, and works for them, will have another person saying it's a waste of talent points and to heal this way.

I was originally in the naysayers camp about Body and Soul, but now I have it and I love it to pieces and I will cling onto those 2 talent points in there for as long as I can. Hell, even on the very rare occasions I get a poison on me I'm grateful I have it. But then I'm one of the lucky ones, there are no disco priests in my guild, and it's been a long time since I've seen one. Any disco priests I usually see are because they are shadow and have disc as an off-spec, and are needed to heal, so I can use the shields as and when I want.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

I hate the icehowl example for for body and soul because if your getting hit by the charge, with or without the talent, you probably shouldn't be doing hard modes. A better example would be saurfang and his ungodly speed debuff.

But thats all missing the point entirely, the only reason to get body and soul is to cast it on unsuspecting people who think they're going to stop running right before the ledge. /evilface

I personally spam PoM amd CoH pretty much on cooldown, with renew fillers, SoL is saved for saving people who look like they might die in under a second. I cast PoH when I can, love precasting it, but I rarely find myself spamming it. One of the spammiest times is defiantly near the end of heroic BQL, when everyone has been bitten. I average 9k hps 5 healing that fight, its pretty insane.

But your eyes are drawn of charcoal they're black they're so cold they're so imperfect because they see a sleeping world where waking isn't worth it

Re: Tell me what I'm doing wrong? Well geared holy

Originally Posted by Dyra

I was originally in the naysayers camp about Body and Soul, but now I have it and I love it to pieces and I will cling onto those 2 talent points in there for as long as I can. Hell, even on the very rare occasions I get a poison on me I'm grateful I have it. But then I'm one of the lucky ones, there are no disco priests in my guild, and it's been a long time since I've seen one. Any disco priests I usually see are because they are shadow and have disc as an off-spec, and are needed to heal, so I can use the shields as and when I want.

Same thing with me, only I never really cared about B&S until I decided one day to test it out in raids. Since then I'm the guild's Body and Soul bot, since whenever we raid with a disc priest, it's me switching specs. This really boosts the talent's usefulness. But I really love it now and have found a use for it on almost every fight in both toc and icc, of course the talent isn't needed or required but sometimes it makes some bosses a lot easier and less stressful for your raids. Some uses I can list:

- Twin Jormungars, to help poisoned people run to people with fire and vice-versa.
- Icehowl heroic, as was stated before, it's not really needed for any guild even attempting heroic mode, but it helps reduce the stress-factor. Also I play with a lot of latency so it lets me work around that.
- Lord Jaraxxus, on those with Legion Flames
- Twin Valkyrs, running to the portals
- Faction Champions, for the remove poison factor (lol) and also to run away and to help other people run away from that nasty rogue looking at you funny.
- Anub, for obvious reasons that were already stated, it helps a lot kiting the spikes because of the maximum of 6 ice patches you can have

Icc: (not talking about heroic since I haven't tried them yet)
- Rotface, speed up people with infection so they can run to the person kiting the ooze
- Festergut, speed up to meet people with spores faster (not THAT useful but, still)
- Putricide, this fight was what really made my Body and Soul shine. It has a LOT of moving around. The speeding up can help you and other people position yourselves better AND it's very helpful for kiting the orange ooze.
- Blood Queen, on those with the Flames thing, also to run away from other people when she goes up in the air.
- Sindragosa, I found B&S here to be better for positioning yourself rather than for overall usefulness. I used it to run away from the pull she does and to help people get to ice blocks faster

Hope this helped you decide if it's useful to spend 2 talent points in it or not!